


Every Living Thing Was Frightened

by Relaxedinperson



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Colliding Existential Crises, Gen, Missing Scene, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23877469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relaxedinperson/pseuds/Relaxedinperson
Summary: Earlier, MK finally had Ferdinand where he belonged: doused in gasoline, sitting on a bomb. When Sarah intervened, MK fled.But Sarah and MK’s night wasn’t over yet.
Relationships: M.K. | Veera Suominen & Sarah Manning
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Every Living Thing Was Frightened

**Author's Note:**

> A missing scene from episode 4.04 (From Instinct to Rational Control). Because they gave us scraps.

Kira was back, asleep in their unfortunate new room at the rear of the safehouse. Sarah sagged against the door jamb with a smile for the little girl and a scowl for the bloody bare walls. The room needed some warmth, some color, if her daughter was gonna be sleeping there.

Sarah kept her distance at the threshold: she had showered and put on fresh clothes, and still smelled gasoline. Wrong conversation starter. Better to suffer Kira’s silent treatment a little longer.

S had gone to check on Kendall, leaving Benjamin at the dining table, carving a false bottom in the heel of his boot or some shit. Sarah was spent.

Her phone went off. She reached for her pocket—no, not there... Bathroom sink. It was rattling on the porcelain, likely to—

Phone smacked floor tile, and determinedly inched along, its course set for the bathtub; cheers to that ugly purple case. Kira’s head jerked in the direction of the noise. She whined, but didn’t wake. 

Sarah let out a breath.

She looked over at Benjamin, still seated. Though his eyes were fixed on her. She mouthed, “ _Sorry!_ ”

And hurriedly padded to the bathroom, closing the door behind her as she stooped for the phone. Unknown caller. Right. Sarah hit Ignore.

She let herself drop to the floor (probably bruising her arse), groaned, and leaned the back of her head, gently, against the door. And stared into space. Unknown immediately called back.

She felt the vibration of it in her cupped hands—when she thought she felt its echo in her jaw, she didn’t scream. Her mind went blank. No thoughts about implanted tech, Neolution, maggotbots.

Brought the phone to her left ear, away from the... And cleared her throat. “Not doin’ this now, MK.”

“ _Yes, now. I need to talk to you._ ”

“I said I’m too tired to deal with your bullshit, mate.”

Only breathing on the other end, that grew faint as it quickened. Sarah waited. Was that it?

Waited too long. “ _In person._ ”

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut.

She didn’t scream: this was her sister. MK had saved their lives, four generations of women in their Icelandic retreat. MK was resourceful, and traumatized. And unpredictable and violent, and tracking her location. Where Kira was sleeping. Some safehouse.

She pushed with planted feet to a standing position, sliding her back up the door. “Alright... got any particular scrapyard in mind?” She sat down on the edge of the tub, and waited.

No breathing, or movement, like MK had set her phone down. Finally some nondescript rustling. “ _I’m at your brother’s loft. Come alone, tell no one, enter through the back._ ” The call ended.

Sarah lowered the phone, shoulders hunched. Another thing, MK was vengeful.

* * *

That eggshell blue hatchback had been curbed a few blocks from Fe’s loft. Sarah caught sight of it first thing, coming up from the subway, as MK must’ve known she would. Taped-up window, and red fender (or brown, same difference in the dark)—Mika needed a less conspicuous car.

Sarah came in through the basement, as MK had suggested. And the past few sleepless nights caught up with her on the stairs, left her wheezing on the landing. Like Cos, whenever her sickness reared its head. 

What a waste of time this was.

She threw open the former Office door, into the disquieting gloom of the loft. No computer screen lit her way as she’d half expected, only moonlight through the tall windows. And all the shadows were trying to act like people.

She spoke to one at random, among the canvases and easels: “Keep tabs on my brother too? Never would’ve guessed it... He make any interestin’ new friends lately?” Trying for calm and only sounding lost. And the thought of Adele only pissed her off further.

“Over here.” MK was the silhouette seated on the couch, dismissed as too obvious, too tangible to be MK. (Forgetting the obvious, tangible car down the street.)

Sarah made the adjustment, to the obvious. “Don’t offer me a seat, I’m good.”

MK stood, and the couch didn’t explode: so Sarah didn’t scream. She saw the gun in MK’s hand and kept her mind blank. In the moonlight, that mask was shining like bone. 

“C’mon, take the bloody mask off. I’m alone like you wanted, just us.” Sleep kept trying to pull her under.

For Mika, obvious was reckless. She couldn’t hurt Sarah; she was only a danger to herself right now. Pacing the length of the loft. Sarah would blink too long and she’d be somewhere else. Slinking away as one of the shadows, or approaching, a frantic, tremoring sheep.

“There’s no us, Sarah,” Mika said, slinking away. “I don’t trust you.”

“‘No us’, you serious? Look at my face!” 

Sarah was bewildered, then belligerent, stopping the shadow cold, half the loft away: but no, it wouldn’t look. “Notice I’m not the one leavin’ bombs everywhere? You don’t trust me, fine—why the hell’re we here, Mika?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Enough! Alright? MK... what are we doin’ here?” She saw the sheep in the light again—as well as what peeked out from under Mika’s sleeve. “Don’t you dare point that anywhere.

“This about Ferdinand? It’s been a long day.”

Browbeating poor Mika wasn’t the way to handle this. Just a way for Sarah to fight through her own stupor. She could regret it later.

“I followed him.”

“Shite—what? What happened, exactly?” She wanted to scream now.

“Don’t worry, your friend isn’t dead.” (Sarah huffed.) Mika tugged her sleeve so that the gun went back into hiding. “I stayed in the shadows, not that it mattered with the gasoline and cold. He wasn’t thinking about a tail.”

“Right, yeah. And?”

“Be quiet. He went to... a penthouse... A car came for him twenty minutes later.”

Rachel’s penthouse? The shower. The wig. Memories shuddered through her. “What car, where’s he goin’?” She caught herself scrunching her hair.

“It doesn’t matter. He’s leaving town, he’s gone.” The sheep did nothing to mask the mounting frustration in Mika’s voice. “Because I let him.”

Sarah blinked and the sheep was closer, and her bloody boots outweighed the feeling in her feet. No escape. She hated that damn mask, so much she could cry. How long had she been awake?

Mika and her demands. “You have to convince me, Sarah, that it wasn’t a mistake.”

The sheep didn’t have eyes, couldn’t see how Sarah’s were pleading: but its ears were large, so it was okay to whisper.

“How can I, when you don’t trust me?”

Mika huffed, and went mercifully slinking away, arms loose, gun bumping against her thigh. “Give it a shot.” She receded into the dark of the loft, and Sarah lost her. 

Too tired. She hated the mask. She just wanted to see Mika’s face. Just for a second. Just one, I’m a few. How did it go?

She cleared her throat. “You ever kill anyone, Mik—MK?”

The sheep emerged, a pale spot in the distance (kitchen). Sarah thought about making coffee, or tea—Mika had so much tea in her trailer. The sheep was approaching. The sheep, in a rage.

“How hard can it be, when slugs like him do it by the dozen? Dozens, hundreds! _Us._ ” The last word could’ve come from the gun for all its eviscerating force. In the moonlight Mika ripped the sheep from her face, and Sarah blinked.

The mask looked utterly serene now, hurtling through the air, giving not so much as a whimper when it hit Sarah square in the chest, or clattered to the floor at her feet. 

She stared down at it staring up at her, and found sympathy for the blind, staring thing.

“He will not save you, Sarah. That is not what he does to us!”

“Alright. You’re right.” For Dolly’s ears only (thanks, Cos). Then up to Mika, finally, beautiful, sweaty, tear-streaked. “I thought I killed my sister. My twin, Helena. You know all about her, right?”

“Yes... isolated, brainwashed. A murderous crusader for The Light.”

“Not anymore, but... yeah.”

Mika seethed.

Sarah nudged a boot forward. “She’d just killed our birth mother. Attacked me... Wasn’t gonna stop attackin’ me, or my family.” The other boot. “So I shot her. Didn’t know what else to do.

“But she came back—to Rachel’s bloody penthouse shower. I’ve watched her sleep, and killin’ can’t be worth the nightmares. So put the gun away for me, babe.”

No use in telling her Meathead was pregnant when she’d probably heard the phone call. Mika wasn’t saying. Always listening—who did she have to talk to? No family, too.

Dolly the sheep mask? Good listener in a pinch. Mika was slipping out of her backpack straps. Sarah watched the gun go in the front pocket, and knelt for the mask at her feet.

“Where’d you get a gun?” she asked gingerly.

Mika swung the backpack over her shoulder. “Beth gave it to me.”

“For this?”

She wrung her hands. “I needed her.” Her voice broke.

Sarah popped up with the mask (knees and back screaming at her), but Mika didn’t reach for it. “Talk to me.”

“I’m so afraid, Sarah.” New tears fell along the old streaks. And she was in front of Sarah with her tears and warm, sweet breath, reaching to touch Sarah’s face.

Implanted tech fucking Neolution maggotbot

But Mika wasn’t feeling for the bot. Just feeling Sarah’s skin. Her cheek. Right... she understood. Mika’s hair, a curtain drawn against the moon. Scars don’t need light?

This had happened already. Mexico, was it? No, it was Beth that time. Beth touched her cheek. Same hands—they all had the same hands. That was funny.

Maybe Sarah had read her wrong, and Beth was trying to warn her about the bot all along. Shit stopped making sense in her life a long time ago. Mind blank. “Mika.”

Mika’s watch beeped its alarm in Sarah’s face, too close to her jaw. By now she was too hoarse to scream: all that came was a lone and weary tone-deaf sob.

MK pulled her hand away and pressed the blessed button that made the beeping stop, and snatched her mask, held dangling at Sarah’s side. “You failed.”

“I what?”

The mask was back on. “Failed.” The sheep brushed past her with a small, dry cough.

Sarah spun around too fast, enough to black out for a second. “You’re just gonna leave, again?”

“Yes, time’s up.” She was at the Office door.

By addled, graceless means, Sarah made it the few feet over to her, to grab her wrist. “No! I need you, I can’t take this shit anymore. If you find—if you’ve got—anythin’ on these bots, please—”

“I’m sorry... I can’t help you, go to Ferdinand Chevalier and Rachel Duncan.” She squeezed Sarah’s wrist to free her own, pinched a nerve or something. (It hurt like hell.) And opened the door, a sliver.

“Oi!” Sarah wedged herself in front before it could widen. “Think you’re the only one who needs Beth? I think about her every... every day. Every moment, Mika.” As she massaged her numbing forearm.

“Guilt. You stole her life.”

“Well, she threw it away first, didn’t she?” She said it and hated herself.

MK bristled but said nothing, let it linger in the air between them.

Sarah deserved it. “And I don’t even know why!” She eased away from the door. “And neither do you.” This was over. “So piss off.

“Don’t come back here, MK. Leave my family alone.” _Stay safe_ —but that part caught in her throat. And MK stalled at the threshold.

“Sarah.” She gripped the straps on her shoulders; even through the mask, she looked anywhere but Sarah’s face. “Huxley Station, November 23rd, the security footage... I had to. I saw Beth. I saw you.” She paused for a glance at her watch and a controlled breath. In...

Out. “You watched her step in front of a train, and decided to walk in her shoes. There’s a destination, always on your mind... isn’t there? Do the others see it—your family?”

“I took a bloody train to get here, piss off.”

And she did. And left the door open for Sarah to do the same.

What was she on about? Everyone felt the urge to jump onto the tracks, or out a high window or into the ocean—whatever was nearby.

There was a term for that shit in French: Sarah would ask Cos if she knew it. On second thought, she wouldn’t.

It was too late for the subway now, anyway, which meant the bus stop. (A bus would work.) Anything was fine, as long as she got out of this bloody loft. If she had to see Fe right now—or Adele—she would lose it.

But Fe was gonna wonder about that faint smell of gasoline. If he asked, Sarah’d say he was just dreaming.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ , by L. Frank Baum: “‘I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way. Whenever I’ve met a man I’ve been awfully scared; but I just roared at him, and he has always run away as fast as he could go.’”


End file.
